


with tendrils and stars in your hair

by hihoplastic



Series: STV Tumblr Prompts/Reposts [6]
Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-24 04:52:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4906228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hihoplastic/pseuds/hihoplastic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She doesn’t expect the bathtub.</p>
            </blockquote>





	with tendrils and stars in your hair

**Author's Note:**

> \- anon requested "surprised kiss"  
> \- title from pablo neruda's love sonnets (xxvii)

She doesn’t expect the bathtub. 

It had been such an off-handed comment, a small thing personal enough to feel like sharing, but without any real consequence. Or so she’d thought. She doesn’t know when he started it, but it must have been shortly after her comment - not more than a week. 

–-

The headboards leave her slightly less puzzled. He’s been doing little things every day to make their pseudo-house more ‘home’-like. It’s a bit unnerving, his attention to detail - or more accurately, his attention to her. Everything she says, every slip, everything she wants or needs or simply remarks upon seems to be filed away somewhere in his head, only to show up later as a gift that he insists isn’t a gift but a ‘creature comfort’ for the both of them, despite the fact that he never uses the bath and keeps saying he’ll ‘get around’ to his own improved bed frame. 

–-

The boat is a relief. Something they both utilize - day trips down the river, short-term overnight camping trips:

They find a hill with a wealth of trees and shelter in case of plasma storms, and a meadow wide enough to show the stars on clear nights. The blanket beneath them is Starfleet issue and scratchy, the breeze chilled, but she feels calm - not quite at peace, not in the way he is, but he’s warm and comforting next to her, the backs of their hands brushing on the blanket. 

She leaves his warmth to point up at a line of stars. “Pyxis.”

Chakotay turns his head toward her with a small frown. 

“See right there, the three, dimmer stars? It looks like the Earth constellation, Pyxis. It wasn’t introduced until the 18th century, and overlays the mast of what used to be Argo Navis, before it was split into three separate constellations.”

“Argo - Jason and the Argonauts?”

“You know Greek mythology?”

“A little.” Chakotay smiles. “I never quite learned all of Earth’s constellations,” he admits, but takes her hand and draws a circle around another cluster, just to the left. “These five here, they look like a group visible from Dorvan - my tribe call it the Kornac, after a native species of primate.” 

Kathryn frowns at the circle he’s tracing. “Are they particularly…round primates?”

“They are, actually. Stubby legs and arms, enormous tails. They used to come into our village and wait to be fed. Not a malicious bone in their bodies.”

Returning his smile, Kathryn lets her hand rest on top of his. “I guess they picked a good place to settle, then.”

He doesn’t blush, but he accepts the compliment awkwardly, his eyes darting away and then back. “They were there first.” 

She arches an eyebrow. “Are you saying we should let our monkey have the run of the house?”

“Not a chance. He might drink all your coffee and I’d be forced to build two cabins.”

Kathryn smacks his arm lightly. “I’m not _that_ bad.”

Chakotay arches an eyebrow skeptically, and in the slight pause she becomes aware of his thumb, barely stroking against the inside of her wrist. She falters, just for a moment, but doesn’t pull away. 

“Fine,” she huffs. “Let’s just hope we find a coffee equivalent soon, otherwise you’ll be paying for that little quip sooner than you think.”

He laughs, suddenly closer than she’d thought he was, though he hasn’t moved. His arm along hers and if she shifted just slightly, she could rest her cheek against his shoulder. She doesn’t, but it’s tempting - so, so tempting in the dark cool air and it’s been nine months and there’s no one but her and him and his unfailing patience, though sometimes she wonders if he’s waiting at all, or just resigned. 

Turning her attention back to the sky, she lets her fingers curl into his palm. 

“I’d be nice to see them more clearly,” she says. “I loved star gazing as a child.”

“Don’t you still?”

Kathryn nods slowly. “I hadn’t really thought about it. I’m so used to seeing them on a chart or a map or from the bridge of a ship… I think I’d forgotten. Just how terribly small we are.”

She isn’t sad - more wistful than anything else - but Chakotay squeezes her hand regardless and doesn’t let go. 

“It’s relative, I think,” he says, his voice warm and smooth. “To a star we’re nothing at all, but to a blade of grass, we look like giants.”

“Gentle giants, I hope,” she says. 

He doesn’t answer, not outright, but his smile says more than she can bear.

–-

They build the cabin together, one day at a time. It’s bigger than they originally planned, but they’d decided in for a penny, in for a pound, so she thinks nothing of it when he decides to build a patio. 

She doesn’t quite understand why he thinks the house needs two stories, but they have more than enough time and more than enough resources, and she reasons he’s done so much for her the least she can do is wait a little longer for a real bedroom. 

She’s washing the last of the fruits and vegetables in their newly installed sink when he finds her, tells her he’s done upstairs and to come tell him what she thinks. 

The bedroom leaves her breathless. 

It’s hers, she knows, by the way he’s added a few of her things, her books and computer and her coffee cup. By the small bathroom off to the side and her bathtub he’d somehow managed to move to the balcony. Her bed is there with her headboard and a small lamp and a blanket and she runs a shaky hand over the balcony doors. 

“You didn’t have to– I’d have been fine with–” She swallows, her voice raspy and low but he just smiles and shrugs and tugs at his ear. 

“I know. I wanted to.”

He doesn’t give her the chance to hug him, or even thank him properly. He disappears down the open staircase and closes the door at the bottom and she knows he doesn’t want her to think she owes him anything, not even her gratitude. He’d like it, she’s sure, but he won’t ask for it. 

–-

When he takes an overnight trip down the river to talk to his father, she uses the shuttle transporters and a few too many replicator rations to add a staircase from the porch to the balcony. 

“You can use it - and the bathtub - whenever you’d like, since you refuse to just go through my room,” she tells him, hands on her hips as he gapes at the new construction. 

“Do I even want to know how you–”

Kathryn shrugs. “Science.”

Chakotay laughs. “Imagine that,” he says. “I have something science for you, as well.”

“Chakotay,” she scolds, placing a hand on his arm. “You don’t have to keep doing things for me. I’m fine. I’m–” She’s not positive she’s happy, but content, definitely. Peaceful. And she’ll get there, in time. It’s been almost a year, but sometimes she still wakes up and expects the thrum of her ship or the sound of klaxons. “I like it here,” she says, squeezing his arm, and hopes he hears the unspoken, _with you._ “I appreciate everything you do but you don’t have to…” she hesitates, then adds softly, “You don’t have to make my burdens lighter.”

He watches her carefully, eyes raking over her face before he licks his lips. “If it makes you uncomfortable–”

She shakes her head. “No, no that’s not what–”

“I’m not trying to…prove anything.”

“I know.”

He tugs at his ear. “I don’t expect anything, either.”

“I know,” she murmurs. “I just wish…” She pauses, choosing her words. “I wish I could help you. Do as much for you as you’ve done for me.”

Chakotay’s lips twitch in a smile. “Do you remember the story I told you, when we first got here? About the angry warrior?”

Kathryn feels her face flush, but she nods and holds his gaze. 

“The way I see it, the warrior woman - she already did her part. He’s just…paying her back.”

Kathryn arches an eyebrow. “With bathtubs?”

“Why not?”

Her smiles softens and she squeezes his bicep before looping her arm through his and leads him toward the front door. “All right then. I’m sure the ‘angry warrior’ is hungry after his commune with nature.”

Chakotay stalls, his eyes wide and face pale and Kathryn worries until he says, “You cooked?” 

She punches him lightly in the gut and leaves him laughing on the porch.

–-

He’s tired and she’s snappish and they fight on the one year anniversary of _Voyager_ ’s departure. He accuses her of holding on to something that will never happen. She accuses him of pressuring her to let go.

She regrets it as soon as she stalks away from the house, the place he’s tried to so hard to turn into a home she could love. She stops at 500 meters, glaring out at the open expanse of land. She could keep walking - ignore the pact they’d made early on, after the first few storms, never to leave shouting distance without telling the other. But it would be foolish, she knows, and worst it would hurt him and that isn’t something she ever intended, but she does. Every day, just a little bit, even though she thinks of Mark less and less and Earth less and less and _Voyager_ still, every day, but with less grief. 

She thinks of him, more and more - the calming timber of his voice, the warmth of this hand, his broad shoulders and kind smile and what it might feel like to wrap his arms around her and lean back against his chest. What his lips might feel like on her skin. 

She doesn’t remember anymore, what the body feels when it’s loved. 

She waits until dark to make her way back, relieved when the only light on is the one in the kitchen. She climbs the stairs and skips the one that creeks and shivers as she changes into her nightgown. The patio door is open. Wrapping her robe tightly around her frame, she steps outside, expecting him. 

Instead, there’s a telescope. 

It’s hand-carved, at least twelve inches in diameter, and polished wood from the focuser to the base. She doesn’t remember crossing the balcony, her hands trembling at her sides as she stares at the device, unable to touch it, irrationally terrified it will fall apart or disappear and she remembers so many nights, sitting with her father on the roof, demanding the names of all the planets and all the stars and all the places he’d been to and she wanted to go. 

She blinks and her eyes water, her vision blurred but it’s still there, waiting silently. 

The wood is smooth and cool against her fingertips and she has to dart a hand across her eyes to clear them. 

“It’ll probably need some tweaking,” he says, his voice low and soft and though she hadn’t known he was there, it doesn’t startle her. 

“I’m sure it’s perfect.”

Chakotay scratches the back of his neck. “I’m sorry about earlier.”

She swallows, her back still to him, eyes and touch glued to the telescope. “Me, too.” 

When she doesn’t turn, he inches forward. “Kathryn?” 

“Why?”

He freezes, eyes flickering between the telescope and the side of her face. “I told you,” he says softly, as if she might startle. “It…makes me happy.”

She shakes her head, frustrated with him. With herself. With the low pitch of her voice and her tears and the way her hands still shake. The way she can’t quite look at him when she says, “No, not - why _me_?”

Chakotay’s eyes widen, stunned for a moment until he smirks. “It’s not because you’re the only woman here, if that’s what you’re asking.” 

Kathryn huffs, but finally turns to face him, her hand still on the telescope. “It’s not. I know you wouldn’t–” She gestures to the bathtub, the balcony, the house. “If it were any one else–”

Smiling sadly, Chakotay shakes his head. “Kathryn, had it been anyone else I’d have stayed in stasis.”

“Had it been anyone else, I wouldn’t have given up,” she admits, almost surprised to hear the words she’d so often thought in the air between them.

“I know.”

“But you…” she forces herself, “You I knew I could live with.”

He places a gentle hand on her arm. “Then why does my answer have to be any different?”

“Because you felt more. Before we got here. Before _Voyager_ left. You already…” She doesn’t say it and neither does he, as if he knows she isn’t ready to hear it. 

Instead, he squeezes her arm and steps aside. “Should we see if she works?” He ducks his head to peer through the eyepiece. “You’ll have to tell me, but I think I can see our primate.” When she doesn’t answer, and the silence strains, he looks up. “Kathryn?”

Her name collapses on the edge of his tongue as she swallows it, her lips pressed to his and her still trembling fingers fisted in the collar of his shirt. She hears him gasp, then his hands slide around her waist and settle on her spine and his mouth opens under hers and he’s warm and soft and safe. The breeze is cold and her hair itches against her cheek and she doesn’t quite know what path they’re on or how long it’ll take but she’s got a pretty good idea of the destination. 

It isn’t Earth anymore, hasn’t been for a long time, but for the first time, she thinks that might be all right after all.


End file.
